You'll usually taste as many as fourteen different bottles to find one that fits your tastes and budget. The Pour Fool can help you beat those odds!

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

Allegrini-Renacer and Gino Cuneo: Chasing the Elusive New World Amarone

Several years ago…well, make that eighteen years ago, I was writing a piece for a British wine publication and was elaborating (much to the eventual horror of the editor, a devout and unshakable Bordeaux weenie) upon the fact that I consider Amarone to be the greatest style of wine in the world. I was typing merrily along, having pretty much composed the whole thing in my head before getting started, when I got to the end of a sentence, glanced at it, blinked, and said aloud, “Where the %@#& did that come from?”

What I had written was the phrase, “Amarone is the wine they’d serve at God’s wedding…” and then some of my hallmark gibberish to finish. I looked back at that phrase and thought, “Glib”. And moved my right hand to reach for the White-Out. (This was before the age of computers, at least for me) Then I dropped the hand and let it stay. The thing is, that’s about as accurate a description of Amarone as I can think of, self-consciously cutesy as it may be.

Gino Cuneo

Years later, while bored one day, I typed in that phrase and there it was on Google. The references have mostly disappeared, except where I’ve quoted myself but, as this is the first time in five or six years I’ve had reason to mention Amarone, here it is again. Now, my tiny measure of Google immortality is refreshed and renewed, so that my grandchildren may one day, in that golden future I shall not be privileged to see, sit with their group personal monitors projecting text directly onto their retinas and read this and say to each other, “Man, Grandpa was a really weird old bastard, wasn’t he?”

Every man needs a dream. This is mine.

Gino Cuneo‘s Dream was distantly related to mine, in a very oblique way. Gino has wanted for years to produce the first Amarone-styled wine nade in the United States. True, he doesn’t have the same grapes at his disposal that are used at the fabled Italian Valpolicella estates that control almost all of the world’s supply of wine made from dried grapes. The towering, black, tyrannical Corvina that dominates those blends is replaced with Sangiovese; the Rondinella, with Barbera. But Gino was determined and began to work on it, hand-sorting the grapes and carefully arranging them on wooden racks to dry naturally in the tepid Oregon sunshine, when there was any; indoors when there wasn’t. Because the mostly-dried grapes lose some much of their water content, the juice was profoundly sweet and viscous, and his first few attempts failed. The wine wouldn’t ferment perfectly dry, which is the key to making Amarone, moving him to release the wines as an Americanized version of sweet Amarone, or “Recioto”. Finally, just a couple of years back, it worked, and now Gino has moved his operations to the Columbia Valley, while maintaining his Carlton, OR, address.

I tasted the finished wine, Tre Nova “Seccopassa”, last week and it is absolutely, unequivocally an Amarone. All the hallmarks of the style are there: amazing depth, shocking complexity, viscous texture, and even a few of the flavors of the Italians, despite the vast differences in the grapes. Neither Sangiovese nor Barbera has the sheer blackness and brooding Balsamic, pepper, anise, and fig notes of Corvina but those differences, to me, deserve to be celebrated, not serve as targets for correction. The aim, after all, was to make an American version of one of the world’s profound wines and, in this, Gino has succeeded in magnificent fashion. The flavors are a deep and fervent core of stewed berries, dried figs, white pepper, sumac, black cherries, fennel, and cassis, with subtle baking spices lurking beneath. There is also a lovely, sweet filigree of those hallmark Columbia Valley volcanic and alluvial soil notes that express themselves as a sort of baby aspirin bitter orange on the back of palate. There is even the classic, necessary trace of bitterness on the finish that marks all fine Amarone.

Gino sat down with me a couple of weeks back and explained in detail how the wine came to be and the epic struggle he had making it happen the first time. He had a load of invaluable help from the great Veneto estate, Masi, with technical details of the production, and credited them gratefully. The entire time we talked, Gino’s face was suffused with the fascination he has with this process, these magnificent wines, and the almost boyish, quixotic adventure involved in trying it for the first time. When I talk with winemakers and they get that happy, totally-absorbed expression and go on at length about it, simply for the pleasure of reliving the experience, that’s when I know I’m in the presence of someone who will, someday, inevitably, achieve something genuinely great with their wines. I last saw it talking to Michael Scott, at Martin Scott Winery in Wenatchee; before that, with Hugh Remash of Eagle Harbor Wine Company on Bainbridge Island, and before that with Maurizio Marchetti of the great Marche winery that bears his name. Maurizio and Michael have already, in my opinion, achieved that greatness. You can count on Hugh and Gino to do the same.

For a first attempt at one of the world’s most difficult and quirky styles, Gino Cuneo’s Seccopassa is nothing less than an unqualified success. I cannot wait to taste what happens in five years! 94 Points

As if that were not enough of an accomplishment, Gino has also turned out a fine and surprisingly authentic Ripasso, that craftiest of Italian creations, in which the spent grapes and yeasts from the Amarone process are reintroduced to batches of the root grapes that were vinified normally. The whole thing allowed to re-ferment, as the Italian name suggests: “Ripasso”, “to pass again”. The process was invented by an Italian vintner who realized that the rich, black grape skins and toasty yeasts left over from Amarone should be good for something other than their traditional use as pig food. Ripasso shows many of the texture and flavor attributes of Amarone, at something like a third to a quarter of the price. In Italy, it’s called “The Poor Man’s Amarone” and that’s because a fine quality Amarone is going to start at something north of $60, topping out at well over $200, while a Ripasso should ran ya about $30. Tre Nova Ripasso is about $20. Seccopassa is $45. Even the price differential is authentic.

On this past Tuesday, February 7th, I was sampled on another truly extraordinary effort; one that, in its own way, is every bit the wine of Tre Nova Seccopassa. Allegrini-Renacer “Emamore” is a collaboration between the uber-progressive Allegrini estate in Fumane di Valpolicella, Italy, and Bodegas Renacer, of Lujan de Cuyo, in the Mendoza province of Argentina. Mendoza is considered one of the ten truly great wine regions in the world, and Renacer is one of Mendoza’s most progressive and innovative wineries, largely due to the efforts and tireless example of its consulting winemaker, the legendary Alberto Antonini, a Tuscan-born vintner whose picture should appear in wine encyclopedias next to the term, “Low Profile”. As a friend and colleague of Allegrini’s winemaker, Paolo Mascanzoni, Antonini was the smart bet for who in the Western hemisphere would be the leading the charge to introduce new grapes, wines, and techniques into his client wineries’ catalogs. Having worked in, literally, every winemaking nation on the planet, Antonini has made a second home in Argentina, where magnificent fruit and a receptive wine community allows him the freedom to follow his voracious muse. With Mascanzoni’s technical help and the careful stewardship of Renacer’s Pablo Profili, Antonini produced a virtual cultural summit, using Argentina’s favorite adopted Bordeaux grape, Malbec, with a fairly new transplant from Northern Italy, the warm, spicy, unbridled Bonarda, with other varietals including Cab, Syrah, and Cab Franc. These grapes were hand-sorted and laid to dry on wooden racks, exposed to the Meodoza sun and Andean breezes until maybe 33% of their water weight was gone. They were then crushed and given a leisurely ten-day soak with their juice in the tank, before undergoing a ninety-day fermentation at warm temperatures. Twelve months in French oak and minimal filtration created a teeth-staining, rib-sticking, incredibly Amarone-like wine whose darker constituent grapes, in my opinion, serve as a more similar analog to Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara than Sangiovese and Barbera, both of which are considerably lighter-bodied than any of the grapes in Enamore.

Again, there really is no fully-convincing substitute for Corvina but the inky, earthy Mendoza Malbec does create the gut-level intensity and soulful depth of Amarone. The flavors are a riot of All Things Black: currants, pepper, cherries, plums, chocolate, and a faint whiff of truffle. There is not the aged-Balsamic character of Italian Amarone or the chewy licorice notes, but the mineral elements are eerily authentic, with the hallmark bitterness expressed in a flavor suggesting endive or a similar bitter herb.

This wine was one of the highlights of my past three years’ wine tastings and I plan to buy a case of it as soon as possible…and it is quite possible for me and you, both – with this amazing bottle selling for something short of thirty bucks. In the uncrowded competition to produce the first Western Amarone, I’d have to call the first efforts of North and South America very nearly a dead heat. One day, if asked, I would tell you the Tre Nova is better; another, I’d say the Enamore. For this current vintage, though, I’d give the nod – by a hair – to Allegrini-Renacer. 95 Points

As a nearly life-long fanatic for and student of the Valpolicella wines, I’m ecstatic to see this style of wild, creative wine finally emerging from our cultural morass of Endless Bordeaux. With these two as a springboard, Western Amarone promises to become one of the landmark wines of our new millennium.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..